The Haunted Castle Analysis

The horror film has the honor of being one of the few genres aside from the Christmas film to own an entire month out of the year. The moment it becomes October, in the United States especially, the haunting themes of Halloween begin to take over. Anyone can guarantee that if an individual goes out of their house during the October month, they will come into direct contact with pumpkin spice flavored items from coffee to Oreos, Halloween candy in all shapes and forms, and the horror movie. Whether it is the film that started it all, The Haunted Castle, released in 1896 and directed by Georges Méliès or to the recent string of repetitive horror of the Paranormal Activity or Insidious franchises, the horror film is a long-lasting genre with one

The film follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead. Although it was marketed as a true story to attract a wider audience and as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate, its plot is entirely fictional; however, the character of Leatherface and minor plot details were inspired by the crimes of real-life murderer Ed Gein, similar to Psycho’s Norman Bates and Silence of the Lamb’s Buffalo Bill. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is without a doubt a horror movie. It features a group of friends traveling through the Texas state to a homestead belonging to the family of one of the group. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who proves to be more than they bargained for, so they ditch him. The group separates at the homestead and two lovers plan to go to a waterhole, but find it dried up. The two characters then hear a generator running in the distance and follow the sound to a house where they intend to ask for gas as their vehicle is running low on fuel. It is here that Leatherface makes his first appearance, bashing one of the character’s head in with a hammer, and kidnapping the other. Soon enough, final girl Sally, portrayed by Marilyn Burns, is the last one standing and she is held at the mercy of an entire family of psychotic cannibals with Leatherface serving as the muscle-bound slave of